stuff like “Well you call them the scum of the earth, why wouldnt they hate you”
Why are parts of the left like this? Seemingly caring more about courting the psychopath incel who wants a white ethnostate rather than stand in solidarity and antiracism with POC?
i always get disgusted and disillusioned when i come upon it
Because Amber understands that you practically have to build communism with some of the dumbest stupidest most racist and most reactionary people, and not a glorious soviet-realist style gang of clear eyed ideological comrades.
“escape” from fascists is literally a reactionary individualistic daydream. You can either kill them or rehabilitate them, and the idea of a glorious purge of evil is also a deeply reactionary individualistic daydream.
Lastly Amber knows this because she works with actual union members who aren’t ideologically consistent terminally online communists in general, but typically blue collar physically broken Amerifats who have no issue voting for Trump.
We can talk about white people or reactionaries or whatever all we want till the cows come home, the real problem we ignore by doing that is that there are 322 million people in this country and only a teensy tiny bit are your glorious soviet-realist gang of comrades, less than like 1%. Slightly above the total votes that De La Cruz got in the 2024 election. The vast majority of them are various levels of idiotic reactionary. Being mad at them for their own stupidity is Democrat brain thinking.
Literally your answer is in your complaint: “Well you call them the scum of the earth, why wouldn’t they hate you” – literally a basic understanding of human communication.
Half of this thread is saying how white people basically need to be John Brown to be good allies. I agree with that sure. How the fuck you actually gonna get them to do that though? Kill all the Non-John Browns? If the logical ends of your ideological thinking is that “everyone is just going to have to do the right thing and I’m not going to deal with icky people”, you’re no different than the Democratic Party’s core offering.
I’ll take all the downboats now.
Because Amber understands that you practically have to build communism with some of the dumbest stupidest most racist and most reactionary people, and not a glorious soviet-realist style gang of clear eyed ideological comrades.
Amber is not trying to build communism. Amber is a SocDem. She projects more sympathy for chuds than for the marginalized.
“escape” from fascists is literally a reactionary individualistic daydream. You can either kill them or rehabilitate them, and the idea of a glorious purge of evil is also a deeply reactionary individualistic daydream.
The US doesn’t have very many active fascists, it just has a swarm of reactionary liberals that play with fascist rhetoric.
However, I don’t see any logic here tied to the post. Do you think you rehabilitate fascists by holding your tongue and not criticizing them or something? How much success have you had “rehabilitating” fascists without criticism? What could thay even ever mean?
Lastly Amber knows this because she works with actual union members who aren’t ideologically consistent terminally online communists in general, but typically blue collar physically broken Amerifats who have no issue voting for Trump.
What union work does Amber do?
I do work with blur collar workers all the time and they are mostly incoherent, ignorant, and manipulable, not fascist.
We can talk about white people or reactionaries or whatever all we want till the cows come home, the real problem we ignore by doing that is that there are 322 million people in this country and only a teensy tiny bit are your glorious soviet-realist gang of comrades, less than like 1%. Slightly above the total votes that De La Cruz got in the 2024 election. The vast majority of them are various levels of idiotic reactionary. Being mad at them for their own stupidity is Democrat braincheerlead a .
Few socialists ignore the problem of small membership or our numbers. Nearly all of our strategies are around how to increase membership and to do more with less. The more idealist segments, socialists or socdem, are actually more in line with your line, here. The Democrat tailist strategy, the idea that you do not need principles or hard lines lest they alienate reactionary sentiment and that you grow by being “big tent” all the way up to, say, having no real position on Palestine, celebrating every union action regardless of its content (including anti-war groups applauding war machine machinists and attending their rallies with no plan to join or coopt). They end up having no lines at all and are just a reflection of bourgeois electoral politics, of bureaucratized captures unions and no plan to coopt or agitate within them, just to cheerlead where “the working class” is, which is reallt just a false stereotype spread by right wing media putsches.
Literally your answer is in your complaint: “Well you call them the scum of the earth, why wouldn’t they hate you” – literally a basic understanding of human communication.
A basic understanding of human communication would acknowledge that you must have an actual negative line on key reactionary sentiments and that you will have enemies based on that line. The question to ask is who are you going to recruit. If your strategy is to go for those who are already as far to the right as it gets, you will alienate everyone else and shoot yourself in the foot every time. This is not how anyone that actually does anything productive irl operates.
Half of this thread is saying how white people basically need to be John Brown to be good allies. I agree with that sure. How the fuck you actually gonna get them to do that though? Kill all the Non-John Browns? If the logical ends of your ideological thinking is that “everyone is just going to have to do the right thing and I’m not going to deal with icky people”, you’re no different than the Democratic Party’s core offering.
In the US, it takes a pipeline. Few people go straight from dedicated reactionary to communist, but they may take a path via SocDems or othet forms of liberalism. Often it is the fact that socialists are consistent allies of the margibalized that brings them to us, that we havr had a consistent line during theit journey. You do not attract those people through opportunism.
I’ll take all the downboats now.
This instance does not have downvotes.
Amber is not trying to build communism
Neither is anyone involved in this discussion. We’re all just posting.
Do you think you rehabilitate fascists by holding your tongue and not criticizing them or something? How much success have you had “rehabilitating” fascists without criticism? What could thay even ever mean?
I don’t think that individuals can actually rehabilitate fascists. I don’t think most people even can change their minds with actual debate. I think people change their minds based on emotional connection more often than debate / logic / facts/ and reason. I’m autistic and I can see my limitations here, I think a lot of people cannot even if they’re not autistic.
Lastly I think society can rehabilitate as many fascists as possible by removing the sociological reasons that people radicalize from, things like housing, food, meaningful work, and social connection, while maintaining exposure to “the other”. Our society through capitalism has effectively destroyed these things and created a world where materially these basic human functions are out of reach of most people.
Ultimately there’s no scientific or industrial silver bullet to the problem of fascists existing, ultimately the fascist has to want to change and if it’s even possible to get an individual to that point the only way you’re going to do it is by making them feel safe materially and socially.
Fascists deserve these things because they’re people, as much as we find them disgusting they are people and all people deserve these things for simply being people. Communism is not treats for the most noble of victims, communism is a base standard of living applied to all that is its justice. We can argue about the order of operations here, and I think there’s valid arguments you can make there, however even in historical practice the order of operations is arbitrary based on material and political conditions. In fact most people shy away from mistakes of agency made by communists in their order of operations because they don’t learn about this shit critically.
What union work does Amber do?
She literally worked for LaborNotes and has been part of various union drives in the past. I’m too lazy to pull the excerpts from Dirtbag because it ultimately does not matter.
Few socialists ignore the problem of small membership or our numbers. Nearly all of our strategies are around how to increase membership and to do more with less. The more idealist segments, socialists or socdem, are actually more in line with your line, here. The Democrat tailist strategy, the idea that you do not need principles or hard lines lest they alienate reactionary sentiment and that you grow by being “big tent” all the way up to, say, having no real position on Palestine, celebrating every union action regardless of its content (including anti-war groups applauding war machine machinists and attending their rallies with no plan to join or coopt). They end up having no lines at all and are just a reflection of bourgeois electoral politics, of bureaucratized captures unions and no plan to coopt or agitate within them, just to cheerlead where “the working class” is, which is reallt just a false stereotype spread by right wing media putsches.
I don’t even know where to start with this, and it’s. bit of a headache so all I’ll say is that the idea that everyone must be in your party in order to be politically useful is the most braindead limiting idea that most leftists subscribe to. This isn’t about having a big tent, this isn’t about having a big party. This is about effectively communicating what your political movement will do for people, all people, not just the people that you like and want around, because in practice that’s a very small number, and this community like all “left” communities loves to shrink that number based on new rules and regulations that make certain people feel better about how good they are, without actually doing good work or providing things to people.
The community’s rejection of the majority of “Amberisms” is often proof. If I disagreed with Amber 99% of the time, I would still want her in or allied with my political movement because practically we want the same things, and she has an ocean of real life experience compared to most leftists.
A basic understanding of human communication would acknowledge that you must have an actual negative line on key reactionary sentiments and that you will have enemies based on that line. The question to ask is who are you going to recruit. If your strategy is to go for those who are already as far to the right as it gets, you will alienate everyone else and shoot yourself in the foot every time. This is not how anyone that actually does anything productive irl operates.
A vast majority of this board operates as an echo chamber, no normal person goes here. There is an immediate jump to “you’re talking about allying with Hitler” instead of your average mildly chudly person. The reality is that most people’s average coworkers would be banned from this board in an instant for their ambient chud ideas.
remember you yourself said
Amber is a SocDem. She projects more sympathy for chuds than for the marginalized.
The magical chud category has been an amazing development of Chapo Trap House because it’s become this wonderful word for “people I don’t like that are beyond reproach but also whoever I’m slandering in any given argument for their political views”.
Also in general I have a much more negative outlook on the actual politics of Americans than you do. There’s a real common strain of ambient fascism in America it’s merely sublimated through the market rather than through brown shirt mobilizations. Most liberals are fascsist, they simply reject the aesthetics of Mussolini and the more obvoius of them are more in line with Pinochet, but in practicality they love the idea of hiding their immorality behind the market, which launders the morality of their actions and beliefs through the economic system.
Almost every fucking common thing drives us to this instinct. I cannot get mad at food delivery drivers no matter how much I tip them because they are an exploited class, and to get mad at them for their “failure” in a fair way is more energy than I’m willing to expend on a trite problem especially when I’m hungry. And yet this very common problem creates a mass of psychotic online fascistic posting and op-ed column drudgery. This type of latent fascism is due to the alienation of people from their labor, the commodity fetishism of people’s consumption and ultimately by a market that is squeezing everyone. That’s what the core of fascism is to me, the political, social and systemic expression of an entitlement to denigrate the living conditions of other people to meet your current convenience. The fasces is a tool of judgement.
Also there are downboats, hexbear just hides them in the CSS.
Amber.
Amber.
The reactionary character of many workers in the US comes primarily from being in the imperial core and from the settler-colonial situation within the US creating racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, and nationalist antagonisms. It’s more complicated than just uniting the workers, because some workers are elevated to a special status by their placement within imperialism and settler-colonialism.
I’m not entirely pessimistic about this like Settlers, but the situation is very difficult. Vulgar workerism like Amber is presenting is not grounded in theory or material reality.
deleted by creator
You might as well try to reform Israel. 🙄
We can not build a workers’ movement when a segment of the workers in the US are privileged by the distribution of superprofits and divided by the settler-colonial situation.
What we can do is agitate the colonized masses within the US and arm them with “theory”, and we can agitate settlers to betray settler-colonialism by doing the same. I’m not pessimistic, Fanon observed that people from the privileged racial caste can be agitated to become traitors to colonialism, but you have to recognize the actual material conditions to be able to do this.
Vulgar workerism is a failure to identify the primary contradiction within our specific context. That’s why reading theory is important.
I deleted my post before you replied because I feel like I cannot be fair to you in this discussion. I think I made the right decision.
What we can do is agitate the colonized masses within the US and arm them with “theory”, and we can agitate settlers to betray settler-colonialism by doing the same
What does “agitate” and “arm” even mean here? What does “betray” even mean here? You’re talking in the most vague generalities.
Your plan as far as I can understand it is:
- Pass out leaflets of Fanon and Sakai to basically everyone
- ???
- settlers betray settler colonialism (?)
- ???
- FALGC
Listen if you don’t like Amber, you can not like Amber. You don’t need a real reason not to like someone. Trying to elevate whatever the reason you don’t like Amber using political theory is very silly.
What does “agitate” and “arm” even mean here? What does “betray” even mean here? You’re talking in the most vague generalities.
Okay, so Fanon talks about how white French nationals were able to smuggle guns to Algerian patriots because the French colonial police wouldn’t search their belongings. That’s a concrete example of what “betray” meant in that context.
Once a white French national understood the Algerian struggle (or was made to understand it) they disposed of racialized colonial paternalism and, in effect, become Algerian. That’s where our agitation comes in within our own settler-colonial context.
That’s why I think Settlers is too pessimistic, and didn’t actually recommend it. I think the privileged caste of workers can be awoken to the anticolonial struggle and become very useful to it.
But I do think that we can’t have a workers’ struggle until the settler-colonial situation is dealt with.
Listen if you don’t like Amber, you can not like Amber. You don’t need a real reason not to like someone. Trying to elevate whatever the reason you don’t like Amber using political theory is very silly.
I bought her book and shit, it’s not like I hate her or anything. She’s fine.
Okay, so Fanon talks about how white French nationals were able to smuggle guns to Algerian patriots because the French colonial police wouldn’t search their belongings. That’s a concrete example of what “betray” meant in that context.
Cool, what does a concrete example of “betray” look like for Amerikkka and why does it matter. Fanon’s work cannot even be simply applied to Algeria anymore because the context is so different.
Once a white French national understood the Algerian struggle (or was made to understand it) they disposed of racialized colonial paternalism and, in effect, become Algerian. That’s where our agitation comes in within our own settler-colonial context.
Okay so, I’m again frustrated by the lack of everything except reading Fanon back to me. The most charitable case I can make here for how this applies to Amerikkka, is you’re going to claim that there are <TRUE AMERICANS whatever the fuck you wanna name your good group> and there are Amerikkkans and you’re going to explain to Amerikkkans how they need to be <TRUE AMERICANS>.
This is the strategy of the Lincoln Project.
But I do think that we can’t have a workers’ struggle until the settler-colonial situation is dealt with.
The problem here is that ultimately this is the same struggle with different rhymes. “dealing” with settler-colonialism is actually an even more difficult struggle because the workers struggle is postmodernist (e.g. workers are a newly manufactured unified people, the proletariat) in nature where the settler-colonial struggle is modernist because it must deal with a moralistic re-alignment of a caste system of preexisting peoples.
In fact Fanon is much more loosey goosey with this shit than Maoist Thirdworldism is because under Maoist Thirdworldism there is no “becoming Algerian” there is no permanent alliance based on culture/ethnicity. Even the JDPON is not a permanent alliance because material reality and the advance of a Thirdworldist may disqualify people previously in the JDPON from continuing to be in the JDPON, and through the uplift the society must peacefully transcend the JDPON without recreating the need for it again in order to actually achieve communism.
Not only that but you’ll find it really hard to explain to your average Amerifat how they’re settler colonists in 2024 without them saying “Get away from me weirdo”.
Amber.
Amber.
Omg whooo cares qbout podcasts theyre all slop garbage blluhhhhhh bkugg
She literally hates friendless online Bernie leftists more than she hates reactionaries. I’ve also heard her speak longlingly about rightoids, but I can specifically remember like 4 different instances of her randomly getting worked up over “leftists with no friends” like a weird fixation. Like if you’re a lonely loser leftist, she despises you, but if you just turn 4chan alt right, she suddenly sympathizes with your plight.
Being a property owner and small business owner who says extremely offensive things and jokes about killing people at 48 years old…. It’s okay, he didn’t go to college, they don’t know any better
Being a debt ridden queer working two minimum wage jobs unrelated to their college degree at age 26, who thinks everyone being more polite and thoughtful would help society… you idiot, you moron, you disgusting bitch.
why did you re-listen to Chapo Trap House 435 - Cancel Crisis feat. Matt Taibbi (7/9/20)
Why are parts of the left like this? Seemingly caring more about courting the psychopath incel who wants a white ethnostate rather than stand in solidarity and antiracism with POC?
Because crackers, ‘progressive’ or regressive, will always bear water and run defense for white supremacy before they ever consider liberating the subjects of empire that they feel entitled to camaraderie from and companionship with. It never fails. It’s the same root from which springs the perennial “we don’t have a race issue in Amerika, just a class issue” out of radlibs and anarchists, it’s the same root from which springs the “well he was no angel, clearly he deserved it” out of the copsuckers and conservatives.
Crackers will always close ranks around their own before they ever think about reparating or restituting. “Leftists” like Amber are exactly why I don’t trust the white left, and only organize with Black formations and organizations anymore.
we don’t have a race issue in Amerika
I can’t even imagine someone saying this IRL without getting dogpiled. fucking hell
Keyboards make everybody a lot bolder than they would be in grass-space
Common frauddogg W.
Marginalized groups should be in charge of their own liberation. If privileged people actually want to help, they should get behind the marginalized groups and follow, not grandstand over them trying to take power and acting with a white savior complex
I hate that this is the connection my brain made here but recency bias got me…
A recent BadEmpanada vid contrasted the white anti-apartheid activists in south africa joining the black resistance orgs, vs the israeli “anti-apartheid” types almost exclusively forming their own little NGOs among themselves and condemning actual resistance groups.
Same shit throughout history
I remember when I finally “got” Amb3r. She was talking about Kim Klassic (a young conservative woman) and she was practically writing a love letter to her. It was weird. I then thought back to whenever she would talk about a reactionary, and she would ALWAYS make some excuse for them or find something positive to say about them. She always makes excuses for reactionaries. I stopped listening after that.
I met Amber at a grocery store in Los Angeles yesterday. I told her how cool it was to meet her in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother her and ask him for photos or anything. She said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?” I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but she kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing her hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard her chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw her trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in his hands without paying. The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “M’am, you need to pay for those first.” At first she kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter. When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, she stopped her and told her to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical infetterence,” and then turned around and winked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, she kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.
Amber.
people like amber say shit like this because imo they’re desperate to distance themselves from the fascist’s made stereotype of left wing people, where we’re all overly sensitive, “PC”, whatever bullshit you normally hear. just like when someone from a minority group agrees with white supremacists in hopes that they’ll be deemed “one of the good ones”. i don’t know why certain people are just dying to be called “one of the good ones” by the literal worst people on earth. these people ARE the scum of the earth, going around spreading hate, disinformation, cultural and social rot.
That seems to be at the root of it, huh? The liberal idea that by not being like what the fascists say you are, you might get them to listen to you. Maybe a deep desire to avoid existential conflict, or rather to avoid acknowledging it for what it is: inescapable. She seems like she still believes on some level that…I don’t know. That this can continue somehow, that fences can be mended this late in the game? That the scope of her focus hasn’t been rendered qaint by how much worse and horrifying everything has gotten in the last few years?
Amber.
I hate that so much. “Leftists pushed me to the right.” No you were always a piece of shit but didn’t realize it until someone accurately called you out on it. Am I supposed to coddle people who are deliberately calling me the wrong pronoun? Am I supposed to be nice to my cousins who are active Klan members?
When I’ve unionized we’ve inevitably worked with reactionary people who have incorrect priorities. The best way to get them to shut up is show them they’re outnumbered and to tell them to shut the fuck up. Bullying works.
I don’t want the approval of fascists, I want them either dead or so afraid of speaking that they don’t.
I’ve never been able to satisfactorily sum up what is is exactly that kept me from fully liking her, can’t find the right word or phrase to encompass her specific blend of
Some of the people here have such a way with words that listening to them feels as clear and logical as looking at a photo, and I appreciate those people for helping me tease out the contours of my problem with her.
I wonder if Amber realizes a lot of the times, those fucking white kids are the ones that instigates to the point where POCs have all the right to call them out. No fucking shit they call them scum of the earth when the other side is calling people like me c**** or the usual phrase “go back to where you’re from” while we are minding our own business, but I guess we still have to coddle those fuckers for some reason.
Amber.
Well, I asked the other day what the deal was with her and why there’s so much hate… This pretty well covers it.
I’m calling them the scum of the earth because they already did hate me and I hate them back. We’ve been doing this shit back and forth since Bush Jr., I didn’t just emerge from the ether and instigate this by calling DeusVult69 a fucking dick out of nowhere in 2016
